Meteoroid

A meteoroid is a small rocky or metallic body in orbit around the Sun. Usually the result of the disintegration of cometary nuclei via sublimation, or collisions between asteroids, they are much smaller than either parent body with sizes typically between 0.01 mm and 10 m. Despite this small size, several thousand tonnes of this interplanetary debris enters the Earth’s atmosphere every day at speeds of between 10 and 70 km/s. Upon entering the atmosphere, meteoroids become meteors whose ultimate fate is determined by the size of the meteroid, its composition and its speed.